For the fourth time in a row, tvN drama Prison Playbookbroke its own viewership record and renewed its highest television rating on December 13, 2017. The latest episode of the series obtained a nationwide audience share of 6.388 %, surpassing the peak rating of its predecessor, the equally high-rated revenge drama Avengers Social Club.

Helmed by the award-winning director of the acclaimed and hit Reply series, Prison Playbook is a black comedy about a star pitcher who suddenly ends up in prison after an accident and must learn to navigate his new world. Park Hae-soo (Legend of the Blue Sea) plays the star baseball player, while Jung Kyung-ho (Missing Nine) and Krystal (Bride of the Water God) play his prison guard best friend and love interest, respectively. The series depicts prison to the viewers as a small-scale version of Korean society with interesting prison characters—inmates and corrections officers alike—as the focus of the story.

The series premiered on November 22 with the highest-rated pilot episode rating among 2017 cable dramas and has seen a gradual increase in ratings since then. Its latest and seventh episode rating increased by 0.5 percentage point compared to the last broadcast and managed to beat Avengers Social Club‘s peak record of 6.330 % which the revenge drama obtained on its final episode. In addition, Prison Playbook became the second cable drama this year to surpass the 6 %-mark within four weeks of broadcast, following Strong Woman Do Bong Soon which achieved a whopping 6.081 % on its third episode. By Korean cable TV standards, getting 5 % in audience share is a sign of success.

With more viewers tuning in every week to watch the drama, the successful broadcast of the entire series is all but certain. The warm and comedic tone of Prison Playbook has been drawing positive reviews and attention from local fans, causing the series to rise to the top of the viewership and Content Power Index rankings.

Prison Playbookairs every Wednesdays and Thursdays in South Korea at 9:30 pm. International viewers can watch the series legally through Netflix which releases 2 new episodes every Tuesdays (Pacific Standard Time).

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Me? Just an ordinary lad with an extraordinary (says this something called 'stereotype') habit of watching Korean dramas. It started with action-filled City Hunter and the rest, as they say, is history.